Adrian Belew

Biography

Adrian Belew is the guitarist who taught the electric guitar to roar like an elephant, squeal like a seagull and honk like rush-hour traffic, and then made those sounds musical. He has played with Frank Zappa, David Bowie, Talking Heads and Nine Inch Nails, spent nearly three decades fronting King Crimson alongside Robert Fripp, and released a long run of inventive solo albums. He was born Robert Steven Belew on December 23, 1949, in Covington, Kentucky, and started out as a drummer in his high school marching band and in local bands around Cincinnati.

Guitar came later, almost by accident. As a teenager he was laid up for weeks with mononucleosis, and with time on his hands and Jimi Hendrix in his ears he picked up the guitar and taught himself to play. Seeing Lonnie Mack at seventeen sealed the deal. He never took lessons, and instead of copying licks he copied the world around him, chasing animal calls, car horns and factory noises with a whammy bar, a fuzz pedal and a lot of curiosity. Through the mid 1970s he worked the bar circuit around Nashville with a cover band called Sweetheart.

Here is the gem. One night in 1977, Frank Zappa's chauffeur steered his boss into Fanny's, a Nashville bar where Sweetheart was playing, because he thought the guitarist was worth hearing. Zappa watched the set, took Belew's number and later invited him to audition in his living room. Belew got the gig, toured with Zappa through 1977 and 1978 and appears on Sheik Yerbouti and the film Baby Snakes. David Bowie caught a Zappa show in Berlin, hired Belew away for his 1978 world tour (heard on Stage) and the album Lodger, and later made him musical director of the Sound+Vision tour in 1990.

In 1980 he added wild, screaming solos to Talking Heads' Remain in Light, toured with the band and played on Tom Tom Club's "Genius of Love." A year later Robert Fripp invited him into a new King Crimson, and Discipline (1981), Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair redefined progressive rock with interlocking guitars, new wave edge and Belew's vocals. He stayed with Crimson until 2009 while releasing solo records such as Lone Rhino, Twang Bar King and Mr. Music Head, which gave him the hit "Oh Daddy" in 1989. He also produced, toured with Nine Inch Nails, and earned a Grammy nomination for "Beat Box Guitar" in 2005. Along the way he helped design a signature Parker Fly, and he remains the go-to name whenever guitarists talk about making the instrument sound like anything but a guitar.

Legendary Performance

King Crimson, Live at the Fréjus Amphitheatre

August 27, 1982 · Arènes de Fréjus, Fréjus, France

On August 27, 1982, King Crimson played the ancient Roman amphitheatre in Fréjus, on the French Riviera, during the tour for their album Beat. The show was filmed, and decades later it became one of the most watched documents of the 1980s lineup: Adrian Belew and Robert Fripp on guitars, Tony Levin on bass and Chapman Stick, and Bill Bruford on acoustic and electronic drums, playing under an open sky inside stone walls nearly two thousand years old.

The set captures everything that made this band unlike any other. Belew and Fripp weave the interlocking, minimalist patterns of "Frame by Frame" and "Thela Hun Ginjeet," then Belew steps out front for the elephant trumpets of "Elephant Talk" and the furious, half-spoken build of "Indiscipline." Between songs he coaxes sounds from his guitar that seem to come from synthesizers, animals or machines, yet he is also singing lead and playing tight rhythm parts that leave no room for error.

Fréjus showed how Belew changed King Crimson. Fripp brought the discipline and the counterpoint, Belew brought pop songcraft, humor and a sound palette nobody had heard from a guitar, and the result was a progressive rock band that sounded modern rather than nostalgic. For many young players, this concert footage was their first look at how far an electric guitar could be pushed.

Gear

Parker Adrian Belew Signature Fly (and modified Fender Mustang) (2009)

Known for: Sustainiac, piezo synth pickup and Variax modeling in one guitar

For much of his career Adrian Belew's main instruments were Fender Stratocasters and a heavily modified Fender Mustang. The Mustang began life as a controller for his Roland guitar synthesizer and was later fitted with Lace Sensor noiseless pickups, a Kahler tremolo and locking tuners, plus a custom paint job, and fans nicknamed it the Twang Bar King after his 1983 album. The whammy bar was central to his sound, and he chose guitars that let him bend pitch hard without falling out of tune.

His most famous signature instrument is the Parker Adrian Belew Fly, introduced in 2009. Belew loved the lightweight original Fly but wanted a synth guitar, and he convinced Ken Parker to build one. It has a push-and-pull vibrato, locking tuners, a DiMarzio bridge humbucker, a Sustainiac neck pickup that can hold notes indefinitely, a piezo hex pickup with a 13-pin output for guitar synths, and Line 6 Variax modeling that lets one guitar sound like a 12-string, an acoustic or even a sitar. Belew has said simply that he plays better on it.

Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus (later Fractal Axe-Fx)

Known for: the overdriven, oscillating King Crimson tone of "Elephant Talk"

Belew's classic tone came from an unlikely amp, the Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus, a solid-state amp famous for clean tones. He has used it since touring with David Bowie, overdriving the input with a Big Muff and a 10-band EQ with the mids pushed, then working its built-in chorus and vibrato to create wobbling, oscillating textures, a key ingredient in the King Crimson sound of "Elephant Talk." In later years he moved to digital modeling, building hundreds of custom patches on a Fractal Axe-Fx so he could switch between projects without a huge pedalboard.

Electro-Harmonix Big Muff and 16-Second Digital Delay, Roland GR-300 guitar synth, Digitech harmonizer

Effects are part of Belew's vocabulary rather than decoration. His early workhorses were Electro-Harmonix pedals: a Big Muff fuzz with the tone control bypassed, an Echo Flanger, a Poly Chorus and the 16-Second Digital Delay, which he used for live looping and backward sounds. A Roland GR-300 guitar synthesizer, picked up during King Crimson, added orchestral textures, and later a Digitech harmonizer let him tap out multiple intervals rhythmically so it sounds as if he is playing far more notes than he is.

Signature Technique

Sound Design, Whammy Bar Mimicry and Interlocking Rhythm

Adrian Belew's approach starts with sound rather than scales. Self-taught and inspired by noises he heard every day, he set out to make the guitar imitate animals, machines and city life. The elephant trumpet of "Elephant Talk," the rhinoceros on Lone Rhino, the seagulls and cats on his solo records all come from combining whammy bar bends, fuzz, pitch effects and the volume knob, played with the timing of a percussionist.

His drum background shapes everything. He thinks rhythmically, and in King Crimson he and Robert Fripp built interlocking parts in odd and shifting meters, each guitar playing a repeating cell that combines into a larger pattern, influenced by gamelan and minimalist music. Belew's job was often to hold a tight, syncopated figure while singing lead, then break out into noise and melody when the song opened up.

As a soloist he is fearless and playful. His Talking Heads solos on Remain in Light, such as "The Great Curve," are wild and dissonant yet perfectly placed, using slides, harmonics, extreme bends and feedback rather than fast runs. He also has a strong melodic, Beatles-inspired pop side, heard in his solo songs and in his warm, double-tracked vocals.

His influence is broad. Players from Trey Anastasio and Nels Cline to Tom Morello and the post-rock and experimental scenes credit him with showing that texture, humor and invention could be as important as speed. He made sound design a core guitar skill decades before modeling and pedal culture made it common.